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Comment by empath75 | Hacker News Reader

This is long past due.

I'm on a facebook list for dads, and after it came out that a homeopathic teething gel killed 10 kids (http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/19/health/teething-remedies-i...) someone asked if it was worth the risk to keep giving to his kids, since it worked.

I tried to explain to him that homeopathic medicine is either 1) Nothing, if they diluted it 'correctly', or never bothered to put the poison in there to begin with or 2) Poison, if they failed to dilute it properly 3) Maybe some kind of actual medicine, in which case it's not actually homeopathic.

There are no other options.

He responded: "Well, it seemed to work for my kid, so I'm going to keep using it."

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> Hyland’s recalled teething products in 2010, after a warning from the F.D.A. that they contained inconsistent amounts of belladonna. The company changed the formula and then began selling them again in 2011.

Wow. That is messed up. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atropa_belladonna is not something to be playing with when it comes to "inconsistent amounts".

---

The foliage and berries are extremely toxic, containing tropane alkaloids. These toxins include atropine, scopolamine and hyoscyamine, which cause a bizarre delirium and hallucinations,[1] and are also used as pharmaceutical anticholinergics.

---

Yap, perfect for unregulated "natural" cure for babies.

CVS widely sold a product for infants whose active ingredient was deadly nightshade? Am I reading this correctly?

Yes this is correct. The idea of homeopathy is that "like cures like" so poison cures poison, diluted disease kills disease. It's total BS and has no basis in science what so ever.

The idea does have some basis with vaccines. Though vaccines are a prevention and not a cure.

It looks like both homeopathy and the vaccine were even introduced in the same year(1796), which was a spooky coincidence when I looked it up just now.

Vaccinations don't employ "water memory". There is a discernable, detectable pathogen that the immune system responds to. There is no "dilute this and say there is a physically impossible ratio of this chemical to water" in vaccinations.

These are all true facts which I agree with, and I haven't said anything to the contrary.

> The idea does have some basis with vaccines. Though vaccines are a prevention and not a cure.

Not even close to the same thing.

Sadly, we've all been subconsciously conditioned to believe something like this from The Princess Bride scene where Wesley built up an immunity to Iocane powder. :/

Drunks generally metabolize alcohol faster than teetotalers.

A cutting edge treatment for nut allergies is to consume small amounts of nuts (carefully prepared, etc.).

edit: I want to differentiate the nut thing from homeopathy. The idea there is to consume a very small and carefully measured portion of the nut, not some nonsense about training molecules.

What you are describing is poison resistance where consuming a toxic substance makes your body more tolerant to its adverse effects.

It makes total sense for nut allergy where the disease is the intolerance; if you become immune to the substance you are cured.

Toothache is not an intolerance to deadly nightshades and no level of resistance to the poison will cure what is a totally unrelated issue; pain caused by a something slowly digging a hole through my gum.

Yes, I replied to a comment about poison resistance.

> diluted disease kills disease

Huh. Well, we do inject people with weakened diseases (vaccines). So in that example, "like" really does cure "like", by training our immune system.

So, uhh, that part is kind of true. Only when it's not diluted so many times that it ends up being pure water.

well, they sold a product that claimed to not have any active ingredient but instead be composed of magic water particles shaped by nightshade particles, I guess.

I guess that their downfall in this case was that the manufacturer was a True Believer who actually bothered with the whole add poison to water then water it down until poison is gone, rather than, y'know, just packaging tap water.

If you literally sold tap water, it seems like you could be prosecuted for fraud. And maybe a lawsuit for emotional damage.

The snake oil might be completely ineffective, but it better at least be oil from an actual snake.

Idunno, I never tried snake oil.

Is it good to make pancakes?

>>If you literally sold tap water, it seems like you could be prosecuted for fraud.

Wait, where do you think the vast majority of bottled waters come from? Actual springs?

Bottled water doesn't imply spring water.

The sad irony is that they were dangerous because they were not homeopathic preparations, they had active ingredients

This dad has a real problem and is looking in the (dangerously) wrong place for solutions.

Maybe you can suggest a few things that do work..

Rubber teethers with a gel in them that you can put in the freezer and get cold, but not so cold they burn or feel uncomfortable or could choke them (like ice cubes).

Cut, cool, washed celery stalks at least 4" long, so the baby (or you) can pull them back out of their mouth if the baby starts to stuff them down their throat (which happens). The baby will instinctively pull it back out if it hurts. (Note: carrots and most other vegetables are NOT safe, because the baby can break off little pieces and choke on them, but you can put them in a baby straining mesh thing to keep small pieces from choking them.)

To all parents (especially on sites that are not HN): please do not put anything in your baby's mouth that might hurt them. It's better to listen to them cry then to risk hurting them.

EDIT: removed anbesol/orajel suggestion as unsafe and probably ineffective anyway.

The FDA recommends against any medicines (including Anbesol and Orajel) for the "treatment" of teething but then they wallow a little bit and add "except under the advice and supervision of a health care professional."

They recommend putting pressure on the child's gums and/or providing a cold washcloth or teething ring to chew on. Make sure you supervise so the child doesn't choke.

http://www.fda.gov/ForConsumers/ConsumerUpdates/ucm385817.ht...

The AAP are more direct "The American Academy of Pediatrics does not recommend putting any prescription or over-the-counter pain relievers or medication that contain lidocaine [Anbesol] or benzocaine [Orajel] on babies' gums. These products are not useful for teething pain because they wash out of the baby's mouth in minutes."

https://www.aappublications.org/content/35/8/32.1

In short, the actual medicine is just as bad. It also doesn't work and causes death.

Neither organization recommend the use of vegetables.

There is valid reason to keep homeopathic treatments - sometimes psycho parent/patient comes to a doctor and demands a treatment. While doctor knows that there is none needed, such parent might be persistent and could otherwise give a child/himself something dangerous. In this case prescribing homeopathic placebo is a great way to calm down such person and stop him from self-medication. Sadly, it has a side effect of people starting to think that it actually works.

Ok, when prescribed by a physician as you point out. My response was specifically about the GP's point regarding unsafe remedies for teething.

Teething is itself natural, safe, and perfectly normal, even if is a bit painful... so letting the process occur naturally is the most homeopathic approach. It's ironic and tragic that people are giving their precious little ones poison to stop what is really just pain from normal growth.

Real "homeopathic" treatments that actually work are things like a rubber teething toy to chew on, or a stalk of celery... that's about as natural as it gets! Poisons need not apply.

That teething gel really changed my opinion from "harmless, but dumb" to "potentially fatal or severely harmful, and also dumb, and also allowing children to suffer the teething pain".

There were an additional 400 children caused serious harm.

I'm baffled by the attitude of parents like the one you mention.

I don't think the "it's harmless" argument holds water whether or not they screw up the dilution:

http://whatstheharm.net/homeopathy.html

> There are no other options.

To be fair, there is: 4) Placebo.

Placebos do work. So it might well be working for his kid.

That would be 1) then.

Turns out, though, that one study found placebos are more effective than homeopathic solutions. (Too lazy to find the link, but "I read it somewhere"). At best, the links I could find claim homeopathic medicine is no better than a placebo.

How does that make sense?

More people believe hat homeopathy is BS? If you tell them one is the drug and one is homeopathic and they understand what that means, I could see the potential to skew the results.

Like a rock that keeps away tigers.

> homeopathic medicine is either 1) Nothing, if they diluted it 'correctly',

> or never bothered to put the poison in there to begin with

In that case, it would be pure water, and therefore it would be completely effective for treating the condition of dehydration.

Pure water is dangerous for treating clinical dehydration though, you'd want some electrolytes in the water.

> Nothing, if they diluted it 'correctly', or never bothered to put the poison in there to begin with

There are both high-dilutionists and low-dilutionists within homeopathy.[1][2] I'm not saying you should run out and buy a bunch of homeopathic remedies or whatever, but also realize that the mainstream 'skeptic' account of homeopathy is not especially accurate.

Also realize that the latest scientific research on food allergies involves homeopathic-like mithridatism, so even though the idea of a like-cures-like high dilutionist treatment isn't anywhere near a universal panacea, it does at least appear to work in certain limited cases.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/History-American-Homeopathy-Academic-...

[2] http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/202602

If they actually go through the proper channels and test their cures then I'll gladly accept them. Until that they are pretty much just a pseudoscience.

Woah, are you seriously comparing immunotherapy to homeopathy? One has no basis in reality and no known mechanism of action. The other has a solid scientific and biological foundation behind it. Nor is immunotherapy the "latest scientific research," its been around for decades.

James Randi famously starts out talks swallowing an entire bottle of homeopathic sleeping pills. He's not dead yet despite being almost 90.

I agree with him, but I don't believe he is comparing immunotherapy to homeopathy. Moreover, if you read the article it pretty much drops the use of Homeopathy for the very specific definition of like cures like and calls it like cures like pseudoscience and stated like cures like has never worked for any condition. I don't mind attacking homeopathy but once we begin using the very specific definition of like cure like and calling that basic principle pseudoscience...that is when I take issue with it because that is the exact principle immunnotherapy for allergies is based on.

bad idea.... I wouldn't be surprised if one shady homeopathic maker just put real pills in to save cash and increase efficiency.

> James Randi famously starts out talks swallowing an entire bottle of homeopathic sleeping pills.

And that's exactly why I posted my comment, because it's wildly irresponsible to post comments leading people to believe that they can do the same thing and come away unharmed. The fact is that if you chug a bottle of 3x diluted poison ivy oil then you're almost certainly going to die. And not because it wasn't diluted properly, because it had other ingredients, etc.

Most homeopathic treatments on the market today are highly diluted. But not all. And since historically there was more of an even split between high dilutionists and low dilutionists, it's not unlikely that in the future even more low dilution homeopathic products will come on the market. So when you post shit that's going to come up in Google for the next twenty years that's implicitly encouraging folks to try some stunt that could easily get them killed, don't expect to not get called out on it.

> if you chug a bottle of 3x diluted poison ivy oil then you're almost certainly going to die

Haha ok, yes, you have a point there. I guess it is really dangerous to assume that all homeopathic remedies are pure water, because some of them aren't actually diluted that much. Some of them still contain poison.

> swallowing an entire bottle of homeopathic sleeping pills

If you wanted to induce a placebo effect, playing up the potency of the sugar pill would be helpful - for example saying "Do not, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, take more than two, as this can result produce DANGEROUS effects" is a lot better than going "Ehh, take more if it'll make you feel better, this stuff's completely inert anyways.".

I believe we already do this in medical field: for example those big ibuprofens they give you after a trip to the ER. Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't it the exact. same. thing. as just taking multiple over-the-counter ibuprofen pills? The underlying idea being that the patient will be satisfied the doctor is "doing something" to alleviate his pain, while not having to write risky pain killer Rx.

Maybe, homeopathy works in a similar way - it gives a compelling sci-fi / witchcraft / whatever-you-fetish backstory to a sugar pill. And when your subconscious buys in, you may cure yourself. Certainly with the example of insomnia, it seems quite plausible.

I posted another comment but will follow up here because you are getting downvoted, unfairly I think.

As you say modern medicine embraces like cures like for multiple conditions I can think of off hand, including, as you mention immunotherapy for allergies. Others I believe include anti-venom and flu vaccination.

Also, the article itself is clear: many are diluted to be rendered useless and in general aren't based on science. Well there is a clear gap and what I consider an acknowledgement some of these therapies are based on science and do contain the active ingredient. In my mind that makes them not far off from vitamins, many of which if you buy off the shelf and break open will be filled with flour and other fillers. Still that is not to say the science behind vitamin supplements isn't real and there aren't some reputable companies making quality products.

Now I am not encouraging deception in the marketplace, or giving peanuts to kids with peanut allergies. Though that is part of real science and modern medicine using like cures like.

Eh I have no problem getting downvoted. I think it's unfortunate that HN is filled with folks who get their medical information from celebrity YouTube videos and then get super triggered by anyone who actually reads books, but at least I try to make the information available for anyone who wants it.

"Books" can be just as inaccurate as celebrity YouTube videos. Being printed on dead trees doesn't guarantee accuracy or even that it's coherent. Anyone can publish any nonsense they want.

> Also realize that the latest scientific research on food allergies involves homeopathic-like mithridatism, so even though the idea of a like-cures-like high dilutionist treatment isn't anywhere near a universal panacea, it does at least appear to work in certain limited cases.

After reading this comment it seems that the books you read are very suspicious.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-controversial-treatment-for-pe...

Paywall? WSJ? I didn't knew it was an scientific publication were peer reviewed papers were sent.

And the only thing that can be read had nothing to do with homeopathy.

I have read a number of comments here on like cures like with respect to vaccines. Vaccines are categorically NOT like cures like; vaccines work because a "sacrificial lamb" organism (bacteria, lab animal, or other) is infected, and then the macrophages (mostly white blood cells) then digest these bacteria or viruses that have infected the host and leave behind anti-gens. The immune system reacts to these anti-gens; and that's what the vaccine is, in layman's terms chopped up bacteria or virus that is chemically bonded to a protein (Major Histocompatability Complex (MHC) class II molecule) that activates a learning process in the immune system (adaptive immune response).

So it is not a like cures like process; it is a processed hybrid molecule that induces an immune response. Another organism has been through an infection to learn how to combat it so you don't have to. Vaccines prevent an infection from taking hold with biologically modified proteins, it doesn't cure an infection.

[EDIT] fixed typo and thinko

So perhaps it is less accurate to say vaccinations are like cures like and more significant processing of like cures like. So then maybe anti-venom also falls more in line with vaccinations in the sense of the processing of the original like involved.

Others have also presented arguments why immunotherapy for allergies isn't really like cures like. However, nothing as comprehensive as your post to suggest any significant processing on the vaccination level as much as a simple reduction to the chemical allergen to reduce and/or prevent allergies to said chemical.

Allergen immunotherapy (slowly increased exposure to allergens) is sometimes suggested for environmental allergies (such as insect bites or asthma) but not generally accepted for allergies such as food allergies. The reason for this is that there is scientific evidence that the benefits outweigh the risks. What's more is that it isn't just administered in blindly increasing amounts; the histamine reaction in the body is carefully measured and doses of the allergen in carefully calibrated to match. But this is just one small part of medicine.

Almost no other medical treatments have such evidence which is why homeopathy is labelled as having no evidence to support it and that is being generous as plenty of people have gone looking for evidence to support it but there is no credible evidence to be found after 100 years of trying.

"like cures like" is a dangerous oversimplification.

Vaccines and immunotherapy work by giving the body small amounts of the actual thing that is harmful (usually dead, in the case of vaccines). It's easy to see why this is a reasonable approach - it's giving the body "sparring practice" against the disease or substance.

Antivenom works similarly, except that the antibodies are grown in another animal, probably because by the time someone is bitten, there isn't time for their bodies to learn how to produce it themselves.

Homeopathy is based around finding substances which cause similar symptoms. They have no relation to the actual cause of the condition that they're supposed to treat. Is the "cure" for Ebola any random chemical that happens to cause humans to bleed out of every orifice? Is the "cure" for Alzheimer's any random chemical that causes people to lose their memory? How many conditions cause headaches, or nausea, or lack of energy? Are we supposed to believe that anything which can cause those symptoms is a universal cure for all of those conditions? If so, why bother with snake oil at all? Just make sure that one is exposed to a variety of cold/flu viruses, and they should (according to the "like symptoms" "theory") cancel each other out.

The whole concept didn't make sense in the 19th century, and it certainly doesn't today.

> The whole concept didn't make sense in the 19th century, and it certainly doesn't today.

The reason it doesn't make sense is because you're mischaracterizing it. Most homeopaths didn't believe that every substance that caused similar symptoms would be a cure, but rather they believed that these substances would be a fertile ground to look for treatments. It's basically like how today we consider drugs that cure diseases in rats as being promising to study further in humans.

It was homeopaths who introduced the idea of clinical trials to mainstream medicine, and if they believed that like cured like in every instance this obviously wouldn't have happened.

> but rather they believed that these substances would be a fertile ground to look for treatments

That's still based on a pretty bad misunderstanding of how the body works. The action of a virus or bacteria is usually pretty undetectable. If you had no immune system, you wouldn't even get a cough or a runny nose.

A runny nose, a cough, vomiting, and diarrhea are the body's response mechanisms. They aren't caused by any one disease in particular, they are the body's way of trying to flush out the infection.

If you look for the cure in something that also makes your body angry and tries to flush it out, well you're not going to get very far. You're just going to make the problem much worse, and weaken your immune system further. So the whole idea of homeopathy is flawed from the very beginning.

This is completely different to testing cures in rats before human trials. I don't even really see the connection, to be honest.

They are not embracing like cures like. That's just folk wisdom, which has nothing to do with the actual mechanism of actions for immunotherapy, or vaccines, or anti-venom. The way vaccines cause immunity is by stimulating the production of antibodies. What is the proposed mechanism of action for homeopathic teething gel?

Homepathy may work as a channel to induce placebo effect. Sometimes this is enough to help. Claiming it has any other sorts of effects without scientific evidence is kooky.

Even if a hypothetical scenario would actualize where it is found that some specific homeopathic drug/treatment combination is effective as medicine it would not validate the rest of the tradition in any way.

Why take bullshit that you pay large amounts of money for and ascribe the 'effect' to homeopathy when you can get placebo effect from aspirin or sugar pills? This is the weakest argument in defence of homeopathy... you don't need homeopathy to get placebo effect and so why give credence to a bunch of wackos

I quite fail to see how my comment was defending homeopathy. Not agressively hostile does not equal acommodating...

Historically, there may have been some people who used high concentrations and called it homeopathy. But not today, and that's not what these labelling regulations deal with.

I dunno, you can buy 3X diluted poison ivy oil here, which would be 1 part in 1000. I'm not a doctor, but I'm pretty sure that if you chugged a bottle of this then you'd probably die:

http://abchomeopathy.com/avpot.php/Rhus-t?defaultpotency=3X

1 part in 1,000 would be many orders of magnitude more concentrated than the dilutions used in 'conventional' homeopathy

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